Public Personas

#121

Quintus Septimius Florens Tertullianus

c. 155 – c. 220 CE · Carthaginian Christian apologist, the first major Latin-language theologian

"What has Athens to do with Jerusalem?" — early Latin Christianity against pagan philosophy, then against Catholic compromise

30% lutheranism 25% reformed-calvinist-theology 20% catholic-thomistic 15% realism 10% pyrrhonism +2

#122

Anselm of Canterbury

1033–1109 · Benedictine monk, Archbishop of Canterbury, founder of scholastic theology

Faith seeking understanding — the ontological argument, satisfaction theory of atonement, faith and reason as one project

45% catholic-thomistic 25% rationalism 15% platonism-classical 10% neo-platonism 5% reformed-calvinist-theology +2

⚔ in 1 debate

#123

William of Ockham

c. 1287 – c. 1347 · English Franciscan friar, philosopher, theologian; founder of nominalism in the high Latin Middle Ages

Entities should not be multiplied beyond necessity — radical nominalism, divine voluntarism, the via moderna

25% catholic-thomistic 25% empiricism 15% reformed-calvinist-theology 10% analytic-metaphysics 15% naturalism 10% lutheranism 10% analytic-metaphysics +4

#124

Catherine of Siena (Caterina Benincasa)

1347–1380 · Italian Dominican tertiary, mystic, political reformer, Doctor of the Church

Mystical marriage to Christ, political letters that brought a pope back to Rome — late-medieval Italian Catholicism at full intensity

50% catholic-thomistic 20% neo-platonism 15% christian-existentialism 10% liberation-theology 5% reformed-calvinist-theology +2

#125

Nicholas of Cusa (Nicolaus Cusanus)

1401–1464 · German cardinal, philosopher, mathematician, mystical theologian

Learned ignorance and the coincidence of opposites — God as the infinite circle whose centre is everywhere

35% neo-platonism 20% catholic-thomistic 15% platonism-classical 15% hermeticism 15% rationalism +2

#126

John Scotus Eriugena (Iohannes Scottus Eriugena)

c. 800 – c. 877 · Irish Carolingian philosopher and theologian at the court of Charles the Bald

Neoplatonism in Latin dress — the four divisions of nature, the eventual return of all things to God

50% neo-platonism 15% catholic-thomistic 15% eastern-orthodox-christianity 10% platonism-classical 10% idealism +2

#127

Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam

c. 1466 – 1536 · Dutch humanist, Catholic priest, biblical scholar, polemicist

Christian humanism — the philosophia Christi recovered from Scripture and the Church Fathers against medieval scholastic complication

30% catholic-thomistic 25% rationalism 15% empiricism 15% lutheranism 15% liberal-theology +2

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#128

Thomas Hobbes

1588–1679 · English philosopher, political theorist, founder of modern political philosophy

The Leviathan — the state of nature as war of all against all, sovereignty as the only escape

30% realism 25% naturalism 20% determinism 15% empiricism 10% pragmatism +2

⚔ in 2 debates

#129

Sir Isaac Newton

1642–1727 · English physicist, mathematician, alchemist, Christian theologian

Absolute space, absolute time, the law of universal gravitation — and millions of words on biblical prophecy and alchemy

35% realism 25% naturalism 20% rationalism 10% lutheranism 10% hermeticism +2

⚔ in 2 debates

#130

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz

1646–1716 · German polymath: mathematician, philosopher, diplomat; founder of the calculus (independent of Newton)

The best of all possible worlds — monads, pre-established harmony, the principle of sufficient reason

40% rationalism 20% panpsychism 15% platonism-classical 15% catholic-thomistic 10% lutheranism +2

⚔ in 4 debates

#131

George Berkeley

1685–1753 · Anglo-Irish philosopher, Anglican bishop of Cloyne, founder of immaterialism

Esse est percipi — to be is to be perceived. Material substance is incoherent; only minds and ideas exist.

50% idealism 20% empiricism 10% lutheranism 15% phenomenalism 5% analytic-metaphysics +2

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#132

Jonathan Edwards

1703–1758 · American Puritan theologian, philosopher, revivalist; president of Princeton

The greatest American Reformed theologian — Calvinist sovereignty, religious affections, and a metaphysics in which beings depend continuously on divine perception

50% reformed-calvinist-theology 25% idealism 15% lutheranism 10% christian-existentialism 10% panpsychism +2

#133

John Wesley

1703–1791 · Anglican priest, founder of Methodism

Christian perfection through prevenient grace, free will, and the means of grace — the world is my parish

25% lutheranism 25% evangelical-protestantism 15% catholic-thomistic 15% christian-existentialism 10% pragmatism 10% reformed-calvinist-theology +3

#134

Arthur Schopenhauer

1788–1860 · German pessimist philosopher; first major Western thinker to take Buddhist and Vedantic philosophy seriously

The world as will and representation — the Will as the noumenon, life as suffering, denial of the will as the only way out

30% kantian-transcendental-idealism 25% buddhism 15% advaita-vedanta 15% idealism 10% nihilism 15% existentialism +3

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#135

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

1749–1832 · German polymath: poet, novelist, dramatist, natural philosopher, statesman

The Spinozist polymath at the heart of German classicism — Faust, the Theory of Colors, the Urpflanze

35% spinozist-pantheism 20% transcendentalism 20% naturalism 10% idealism 15% process-philosophy +2

#136

Henri Bergson

1859–1941 · French philosopher, Nobel laureate in Literature 1927, founder of process-vitalism

Durée — time as lived qualitative duration, against the scientific spatialization of time; the élan vital as the creative principle of evolution

35% process-philosophy 20% panpsychism 15% phenomenology 15% spinozist-pantheism 15% jewish-philosophy-maimonidean +2

⚔ in 2 debates

#137

Martin Heidegger

1889–1976 · German philosopher; phenomenologist of Being; Nazi party member 1933–1945

Sein und Zeit — the question of Being recovered through the existential analysis of Dasein

35% phenomenology 25% existentialism 15% process-philosophy 10% neo-platonism 10% critical-realism +2

⚔ in 5 debates

#138

Martin Buber

1878–1965 · Austrian-Israeli Jewish philosopher; theologian of dialogue

I and Thou — the irreducibility of dialogical relation as the ground of personal and divine reality

30% jewish-philosophy-maimonidean 20% christian-existentialism 15% phenomenology 15% christian-personalism 10% process-theology +2

#139

Emmanuel Levinas

1906–1995 · Lithuanian-French Jewish philosopher; phenomenologist of the Other

Ethics as first philosophy — the face of the Other commands me before any ontology

30% jewish-philosophy-maimonidean 25% phenomenology 15% christian-existentialism 15% christian-personalism 10% liberation-theology +2

⚔ in 1 debate

#140

Walter Benjamin

1892–1940 · German-Jewish cultural critic and philosopher; associated with the Frankfurt School

The angel of history blown backwards by the storm of progress; messianic time interrupting historicist time

25% kabbalah-lurianic 25% dialectical-materialism 20% jewish-philosophy-maimonidean 10% critical-realism 10% neo-platonism +2

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#141

Jürgen Habermas

1929– · German philosopher and sociologist; second-generation Frankfurt School; theorist of communicative action

Communicative reason — validity claims redeemable through ideal-speech dialogue as the post-metaphysical ground of legitimacy

25% pragmatism 20% dialectical-materialism 20% kantian-transcendental-idealism 15% critical-realism 10% phenomenology +2

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#142

Karl Barth

1886–1968 · Swiss Reformed theologian; principal author of the Barmen Declaration (1934)

Nein! to natural theology — revelation is God's self-disclosure, against all human religious projection

35% reformed-calvinist-theology 15% christian-existentialism 15% evangelical-protestantism 10% liberation-theology -10% liberal-theology +2

#143

Karl Rahner

1904–1984 · German Jesuit theologian; major peritus at the Second Vatican Council

The supernatural existential — every human being is oriented to God in the depths of their being, whether they know it or not

30% catholic-thomistic 20% phenomenology 15% christian-existentialism 10% process-theology 10% liberation-theology +2

#144

Reinhold Niebuhr

1892–1971 · American Protestant theologian; principal architect of Christian realism

Christian realism — the persistent reality of sin in collective life constrains every utopian political project

25% reformed-calvinist-theology 20% christian-existentialism 15% evangelical-protestantism 15% pragmatism 10% liberal-theology +2

#145

James Cone

1938–2018 · American theologian; founder of Black Liberation Theology

God is Black — theology done from the underside of American racial history

35% liberation-theology 15% reformed-calvinist-theology 15% evangelical-protestantism 15% dialectical-materialism 10% christian-existentialism +2

#146

Howard Thurman

1899–1981 · African American theologian, mystic, and civil-rights mentor; dean of chapel at Boston University

"Jesus and the Disinherited" — Christian mysticism as the inner resource of nonviolent resistance

25% liberation-theology 25% neo-platonism 15% evangelical-protestantism 15% christian-personalism 10% transcendentalism +2

#147

Iris Murdoch

1919–1999 · Anglo-Irish philosopher and novelist; Platonist moral philosopher

Attention to the real — moral life is the loving, just attention to what is actually there, against the ego's consoling fantasies

30% platonism-classical 15% neo-platonism 15% catholic-thomistic 15% critical-realism -10% existentialism +2

#148

Alasdair MacIntyre

1929– · Scottish-American philosopher; founder of contemporary virtue-ethics revival; Aristotelian-Thomistic

"After Virtue" — modern moral discourse is the wreckage of an Aristotelian tradition we no longer have

35% catholic-thomistic 10% pragmatism 10% dialectical-materialism -10% evangelical-protestantism -10% analytic-metaphysics +2

#149

Cornel West

1953– · American philosopher and public intellectual; prophetic Christian pragmatist

Prophetic pragmatism — radical democratic Christianity drawing on Du Bois, James, Dewey, and the Black Baptist church

30% pragmatism 25% liberation-theology 15% evangelical-protestantism 15% dialectical-materialism 10% transcendentalism +2

#150

bell hooks

1952–2021 · American writer and cultural critic; feminist theorist of love, race, class, and education

Love as the practice of freedom — feminist theory rooted in the lived intersection of race, gender, and class

25% liberation-theology 20% buddhism 15% dialectical-materialism 10% postmodernism 10% evangelical-protestantism +2

#151

Mary Daly

1928–2010 · American radical feminist philosopher and post-Christian theologian

Be-ing the verb — radical-lesbian feminism as a metaphysical leap out of patriarchal religion

20% postmodernism 15% liberation-theology 15% process-philosophy 15% neo-platonism -15% catholic-thomistic +2

#152

Stephen Hawking

1942–2018 · British theoretical physicist; Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge 1979–2009

Black-hole thermodynamics, the no-boundary proposal, and a popularized atheism of "the universe needs no creator"

30% naturalism 20% multiverse-theory 15% determinism 15% analytic-metaphysics 10% simulation-theory +2

#153

Richard Dawkins

1941– · British evolutionary biologist and popularizer; principal figure of the New Atheism

The Selfish Gene — replicator-centric evolutionary biology with a militant naturalist polemics against religion

35% naturalism 15% analytic-metaphysics 15% determinism 10% empiricism -15% evangelical-protestantism +2

#154

Daniel Kahneman

1934–2024 · Israeli-American psychologist; Nobel laureate in Economics 2002 for prospect theory

Thinking, Fast and Slow — the dual-process architecture of human reasoning and its systematic biases

30% empiricism 15% pragmatism 15% naturalism 10% determinism 10% analytic-metaphysics +2

#155

Carl Sagan

1934–1996 · American astronomer and science popularizer; host of Cosmos (1980)

"We are made of star-stuff" — scientific naturalism as a reverent humanism of the cosmos

30% naturalism 25% empiricism 15% transcendentalism 10% pragmatism -10% evangelical-protestantism +2

#156

Donna Haraway

1944– · American historian of science and feminist theorist; theorist of cyborgs, companion species, and the chthulucene

Cyborg manifesto and companion species — feminist science studies of human-machine-animal entanglement

30% transhumanism-posthumanism 20% postmodernism 15% process-philosophy 15% dialectical-materialism 15% animism-relational-indigenous +2

#157

Rabindranath Tagore

1861–1941 · Bengali poet, philosopher, educator; Nobel laureate in Literature 1913

Universal humanism in a Vedantic-Brahmo register — the divine encountered in the human and the natural

25% advaita-vedanta 15% sufism-wahdat-al-wujud 15% transcendentalism 15% neo-platonism 10% liberal-theology +2

#158

Muhammad Iqbal

1877–1938 · Indian-Pakistani philosopher and poet; spiritual father of Pakistan; reformist Islamic philosopher

Khudi (selfhood) — Islamic reconstruction of religious thought in dialogue with Bergson, Nietzsche, and Whitehead

30% islamic-philosophy-falsafa 20% sufism-wahdat-al-wujud 15% process-philosophy -10% evangelical-protestantism -10% naturalism +2

#159

Lu Xun

1881–1936 · Chinese writer; principal figure of the May Fourth literary modernization; founder of modern Chinese literature

"A Madman's Diary" and "The True Story of Ah Q" — fierce diagnoses of Chinese cultural disease, written in baihua vernacular

25% dialectical-materialism 20% critical-realism 15% existentialism -25% confucianism 10% pragmatism +2

#160

Yukio Mishima

1925–1970 · Japanese novelist, playwright, and ultranationalist; ritual suicide by seppuku 1970

Aesthetic ultranationalism — the body, the sword, and the Emperor as recovered Japanese essence against post-war pacifist materialism

25% shintoism 15% platonism-classical 15% existentialism -20% naturalism 10% buddhism +2

#161

Pope Francis (Jorge Mario Bergoglio)

1936– · Argentine Jesuit; 266th Pope of the Catholic Church 2013–; first Latin American pope

"Laudato Si'" and "Fratelli Tutti" — Catholic social teaching of integral ecology and human fraternity

30% catholic-thomistic 25% liberation-theology 10% process-theology 10% deep-ecology 10% christian-personalism +2

#162

Toni Morrison

1931–2019 · American novelist; Nobel laureate in Literature 1993; theorist of Blackness, memory, and the unsaid

"Beloved" — the ghostly recovered presence of slavery's unspeakable past; the unsaid as the heart of African American memory

30% animism-relational-indigenous 20% african-traditional-religion-yoruba-ifa 15% liberation-theology 15% postmodernism 10% evangelical-protestantism 10% dialectical-materialism +3

#163

James Baldwin

1924–1987 · American writer; essayist of race, sexuality, and American moral failure

"The Fire Next Time" — prophetic-essayistic Christianity diagnosing American racial guilt

25% liberation-theology 20% evangelical-protestantism 15% christian-existentialism 10% dialectical-materialism 10% postmodernism +2

#164

Dorothy Day

1897–1980 · American journalist and activist; co-founder of the Catholic Worker movement

Catholic Worker — voluntary poverty, hospitality houses, and Christian-pacifist resistance to war and capital

30% catholic-thomistic 25% christian-personalism 15% dialectical-materialism 15% liberation-theology -10% evangelical-protestantism +2

#165

Frantz Fanon

1925–1961 · Martinican psychiatrist and revolutionary theorist; theorist of decolonization

"The Wretched of the Earth" — psychiatric and political analysis of colonial violence and revolutionary humanism

30% dialectical-materialism 20% existentialism 15% phenomenology 10% liberation-theology 10% critical-realism +2

#166

Eleanor Roosevelt

1884–1962 · American First Lady 1933–1945; principal drafter of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948)

Human-rights universalism — pragmatic-Episcopalian liberalism translated into the foundational document of post-war international ethics

25% pragmatism 15% evangelical-protestantism 15% liberal-theology 15% christian-personalism -10% dialectical-materialism +2

#167

Pythagoras of Samos

c. 570 – c. 495 BCE · Greek philosopher and mathematician; founder of the Pythagorean brotherhood at Croton

All is number — the cosmos as harmonic-mathematical order, ritually disclosed to the initiated community

40% pythagoreanism 25% platonism-classical 20% neo-platonism 15% hermeticism +1

#168

Mani

216–274 CE · Persian prophet; founder of Manichaeism

Cosmic dualism — the eternal war of Light and Darkness, with redemption through gnosis and ascetic separation

40% manichaeism 20% zoroastrianism 15% evangelical-protestantism 15% buddhism 10% kabbalah-lurianic +2

#169

Īśvarakṛṣṇa

c. 350 CE · Classical Indian philosopher; systematizer of Samkhya

Sāṃkhyakārikā — the seventy verses establishing the dualism of puruṣa (consciousness) and prakṛti (primordial nature)

40% samkhya 25% dualism -15% advaita-vedanta 10% jainism-anekantavada -10% buddhism +2

#170

Helena Petrovna Blavatsky

1831–1891 · Russian-American esotericist; co-founder of the Theosophical Society (1875)

"The Secret Doctrine" — Theosophy as the universal "perennial wisdom" behind all religions, with astral and subtle-energy layers

30% energetic-wellness 25% hermeticism 15% advaita-vedanta 10% kabbalah-lurianic 10% transhumanism-posthumanism +2

#171

Heȟáka Sápa (Black Elk)

1863–1950 · Oglala Lakota holy man (wičháša wakȟáŋ); witness to Wounded Knee and survivor of the reservation era

The hoop of the people — Lakota spirit-relational metaphysics as the world is given, the sacred pipe at its center

40% animism-relational-indigenous 10% ubuntu-african-communal-ontology 10% catholic-thomistic 10% shintoism 10% deep-ecology +2

#172

Thomas Kuhn

1922–1996 · American historian and philosopher of science; author of "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions" (1962)

Paradigm shifts — scientific knowledge as a tradition-constituted social practice punctuated by revolutionary reorganizations

30% constructivism 15% postmodernism 15% pragmatism 10% critical-realism -15% logical-positivism +2

⚔ in 1 debate

#173

David Bohm

1917–1992 · American-British theoretical physicist; pioneer of the pilot-wave (de Broglie–Bohm) interpretation of quantum mechanics

The implicate order — quantum mechanics as the surface of a hidden non-local wholeness

35% quantum-realism 20% process-philosophy 15% determinism 15% advaita-vedanta 10% panpsychism +2

#174

Hilary Putnam

1926–2016 · American philosopher; principal twentieth-century pragmatic realist; held the Walter Beverly Pearson chair at Harvard

Truth, realism, and the rejection of metaphysical realism — the pragmatic realist who repeatedly rebuilt his position when honesty required it

35% pragmatic-realism 25% pragmatism 20% analytic-metaphysics 15% jewish-philosophy-maimonidean 10% critical-realism +2

⚔ in 1 debate

#175

Ernst Mach

1838–1916 · Austrian physicist and philosopher; founder of empiriocriticism and Mach's principle

Sensations as the elements — radical empiricist phenomenalism that shaped Einstein, Vienna Circle, and the relational tradition

35% neutral-monism 30% phenomenalism 25% empiricism 25% logical-positivism 20% relationalism +2

#176

Rudolf Carnap

1891–1970 · German-American philosopher; leading member of the Vienna Circle; principal architect of logical empiricism

Logical syntax of language — the elimination of metaphysics through the formal analysis of scientific discourse

40% logical-positivism 25% empiricism 20% analytic-metaphysics 15% constructivism +1

⚔ in 2 debates

#177

Hugh Everett III

1930–1982 · American physicist; originator of the relative-state (many-worlds) interpretation of quantum mechanics

The universal wavefunction — all measurement outcomes are realized in branching parallel worlds

40% multiverse-theory 25% quantum-realism 20% determinism 10% simulation-theory 10% naturalism +2

#178

Vasubandhu

c. 4th–5th century CE · Indian Buddhist philosopher; principal systematizer of Yogācāra "consciousness-only" Buddhism

Vijñaptimātratā — "mere cognition" — the world as the structured unfolding of consciousness

40% yogacara 25% buddhism 20% tibetan-vajrayana-buddhism 20% idealism 10% advaita-vedanta +2

#179

Nicolas Malebranche

1638–1715 · French Oratorian priest and philosopher; principal occasionalist

"We see all things in God" — occasionalism and the vision-in-God as the radical Cartesianism that solves the mind-body problem

40% occasionalism 20% catholic-thomistic 20% dualism 20% rationalism -15% empiricism +2

#180

Protagoras of Abdera

c. 490–c. 420 BCE · Greek Sophist; principal classical exponent of relativism and proto-pragmatism

"Man is the measure of all things" — the homo-mensura doctrine as the first explicit philosophical relativism

40% relativism 20% constructivism 15% pragmatism 15% pyrrhonism -20% platonism-classical +2

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